


Who Will Save Your Soul?

by daleksigma



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Episode: s08e12 Death in Heaven, F/M, Post-Episode: s08e12 Death in Heaven, twissy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-02-27 04:19:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2678876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daleksigma/pseuds/daleksigma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Conquer the universe, Mr. President!"</p><p>The Doctor chose to take Missy's army instead of giving it to Danny. AU where the Doctor and Missy travel together in the TARDIS, righting the wrongs of the universe with an army of Cybermen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Everything You Loved

**Author's Note:**

> Because I really ship Twissy and I sort of wouldn't mind at all if the next season was the Doctor and Missy traveling together in the TARDIS. Also, sort of inspired by [this art](http://doctorwhyyy.tumblr.com/post/102327395121/you-win-a-bad-end-where-the-doctor-accepts-the) by [doctorwhyyy](http://doctorwhyyy.tumblr.com/).

_I need you to know that we're not so different. I need my friend back._

The Doctor could not accept it. She was lying—she was manipulating him—it was a trick. After all the two of them had been through, he wouldn't—he couldn't—believe it.

"I have asked you time and time again to travel with me. Why now—why suddenly go to all this effort just to—get me back?" he demanded.

There was a part of him—perhaps the same part that had cried over the Master's body all those centuries ago on the Valiant—that wanted her to be telling the truth. He wanted her to travel with him. But he didn't believe it.

Missy gave a little shrug. "If you take my gift, I'll tell you where it _i-_ is," she said in a singsong voice.

"You didn't answer my question."

She leaned in closer to his face. He took a step back.

"That's because your question doesn't need answering, love. I've always wanted you. But you were too busy doting over earth girls and trying to _save the planet_ and trying to _thwart_ me at every turn." She smiled sweetly. "Now how about it? If I throw in the location of Gallifrey, will you take the army?"

The Doctor took another step back.

"Oh, come on, you know you want to accept my offer. Just say it. Mr. President."

"I don't _want_ it! I've never _wanted_ an army."

"Oh, please, we've been through this already. Anyway, you're only going to find out where Gallifrey is if you take it." She leaned her cheek against his shoulder. "And me with you in your lonely old TARDIS."

She was touching his shoulder. She was right there, right next to him. He could smell her hair. He knew he should pull away, but he didn't.

"And if I…take your army—how do I know you'll be honest with me? How do I know that you won't lie about its location?"

He should pull away. He should walk away now. But he was still standing right here, in contact with her. It was more comforting than it should have been. It had been so long since he had felt the touch of one of his own species. Hers had been the first double heartbeat besides his own that he had felt in over a millennium. He couldn't move away.

But Missy could. She stood up and danced back. "Well, you don't," she gave another of her cute little shrugs. "But I want to go home someday too, you know."

"Doctor, you can't actually be thinking of doing this. An army." Clara called from where she was still wrapped around the now-emotionless Danny Pink.

The Doctor hadn’t forgotten about her. Missy's presence was just so…overpowering, he couldn't concentrate correctly. He had given up trying to get Clara away from the Cyber-converted PE teacher. If he hadn't snapped her yet, he wasn't going to.

She pulled herself away from Danny slowly, her eyes still full of tears. "Doctor, if you take it she wins. After everything she's done. You can't let that happen."

The Doctor looked down at the bracelet Missy had placed on his wrist, then up at Clara.

Missy huffed a breath. "And the woman holding you leash is in the way." She twirled her upbrella around and pointed it at Danny. "How 'bout I throw in the boyfriend as a little bonus. Just for her."

Clara stepped forward. "You'll—you'll give me Danny back."

"Yes, I suppose that was his name, wasn't it? I throw in the boy Danny and everyone lives happily every after."

"You can bring him back," Clara repeated.

""Course I can. Simple."

It was Clara's turn to look uncertain.

"You see, Clara?" the Doctor said. "That's the choice. An offer too good to refuse, and a price too high to pay." He rounded on Missy. "But that's not really a  choice, is it? Because anyone would do this to save everything they love. Everyone has a price tag. Yes, I'll take your army. And yes, you'll give us back PE and Gallifrey."

Tears were welling up in Clara's eyes. He hated when she did that. It was like they were leaking, and it made him so miserable to see it. Why should leaky eyes make him feel so miserable?

"You can't do this just for me," Clara said.

"I can, and I will. And besides, it's not just for you. I get something out of it too—"

"And someone!" Missy cut in.

He ignored her, however much the thought made his belly jump. "Now chin up, Clara. We came here to get your boyfriend back from the dead, and now we have a way to do it. Job done."

Clara shook her head. "Not like this."

"It's the only way!"

Clara's expression didn't change. The Doctor looked away.

Missy was watching the exchange with a slight smile on her face, leaning against a gravestone. The Doctor glared at her. She swung her umbrella around and walked up to the Doctor.

"Just give the order, Doctor," she leaned in closer.

Did she want another kiss? Should he kiss her now?

But she leaned back. "Give the order, and then—what was it you said?" she affected a puzzled expression. "We could travel together. It would be my _honor_."

"Don't you dare—don't you dare repeat that."

"I mean it. I'd hop right into your little old TARDIS and travel the stars right beside you. Plus a few billion Cybermen."

"We—both of us?"

She put her hand on his hearts. "Together."

He could feel them beating harder in his chest. The Doctor put a hand on her wrist gently, holding her hand against his hearts. " _My honor_ ," he said softly.

He turned away from both of them and held up the command bracelet. "Cybermen! Into my TARDIS," he said roughly. "NOW!"

The army of Cybermen turned at once to face the blue police box. Then, one by one, with a sound of stomping and clicking, they lined up single file in front of the double doors.

The Doctor glared at Missy, then stomped off after them. He wanted this to be her fault. She had made him do this. It was her choice, her plan—but he knew it wasn't. It was always him. He was the one who made the difficult choices so others didn't have to. He saved Danny so Clara wouldn't have to. He took an army to get his home back. Sometimes there were no good choices, but you still had to choose. He clicked his fingers and the TARDIS doors snapped open.

Missy grinned in delight and clapped. She reached into her pocket and pulled out another bracelet, identical to the one she had given the Doctor.

"Catch!" she threw the bracelet to Clara, who caught it deftly. She winked at the Doctor. "Don't worry, love, it's just a plain old teleport bracelet. Yours is a special gift from me to you." She raised her voice. "Put in on his wrist and tell him to push the little green button."

Clara clasped her hands around Danny's wrist. "You hear her? Come home to me."

The Cyberman's face was expressionless.

"Oh, what a shame," Missy said. "Seems he doesn't want to come home to his love after all. Oh, wait. What love? He hasn't got any emotions, dear!"

The Doctor glared at her some more.

The whole graveyard was silent for a moment.

"Danny—" Clara said.

"Yes."

The Doctor spun around.

Danny raised his arm. "Yes."

Clara latched onto him again. The Doctor imagined that must be very uncomfortable, hugging a Cyberman. Then Danny touched his finger to his wrist, and disappeared in a flash of green.

Missy looked a bit miffed. "Well, that was surprising. Don't you worry, love, he's only gone back to my little hard drive. He'll figure out how to get back in time. With his plain old boring body too, but I guess that's what you want, isn't it?"

A silence fell over the graveyard as Clara stared at the stop where Danny had vanished, soon to return any second. The Doctor suddenly felt he didn't want to see the reunion. He didn't deserve it. He pushed past the Cyberman at the front of the line to get to the TARDIS doors.

"Doctor—" Clara said.

"Go home with PE, Clara," the Doctor said without looking at her.

"No, I was just—"

The Doctor turned around. "Yes?"

"Thank you. For Danny."

The Doctor looked at the ground, unable to face her.

 _Everyone has a price tag._ And Clara's had just been paid.

Missy clapped her hands and walked over to the Doctor, swinging her umbrella. He ducked into the TARDIS. The familiar hum of the console room did nothing to soften his expression.  The old girl would hate him bringing the Cybermen in here—she hadn't even let him put weapons on her during the Time War—but he had no choice, now. No choice. No choice.

Missy appeared a moment later, standing just inside the double doors, leaning on the railing. "Well, that's the boyfriend all sorted."

The Doctor just glared at her. He didn't seem to be able to do anything else.

"Oh, come one, smile. It's your birthday."

The Doctor rounded on her. "I don't want this army. That's not—not why I'm doing this."

Missy shrugged and made a silly face. "If y'say so."

"I'm saving Danny. I'm finding Gallifrey. Isn't it enough for you that I’m doing this? What more do you want?"

"I think someone might be lying to himself about his motives just a teensy bit?"

The Doctor slammed a fist against the console. The TARDIS whirred angrily. He quickly rubbed the spot he had hit. Then he shouted at his bracelet, "You, Cybermen! Inside, now!"

He grimaced as he watched the army march through the doors, past him and Missy, and out the door on the other side of the console room. The TARDIS's whirrs became much higher pitched, but nothing happened.

As the last Cyberman entered, Missy leaned her head on his shoulder, an eager look on her face. "Where to now, Mr. President?"


	2. Beauty, Divinity, Hatred

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First stop, the Dalek camps.

Somehow, the Doctor had managed to allow Missy to wrap her arms around him from behind and rest her chin on his shoulder. He didn’t know how it had happened, but there she was. He suspected he'd been someone complicit in it.

He shouldn't have let her do that. He extricated himself from her arms and turned around, leaning against the TARDIS console so he could face her.

"It's your army," he snarled. "Why don’t you decide?"

Her face fell. What had she expected—for him to be happy with this?

"No, Doctor. I think you should decide. Let the birthday boy pick where to have his party."

He turned away from her and walked around the console, pretending to adjust the stabilizers—or at least, he was pretty sure it was the stabilizers. He usually never bothered setting them.

"Does that work on all your little human friends?" Missy followed him around the console. "'Cause I don't wanna be rude, but I know exactly what you're doing and you're not changing a single thing."

It had been too long since the Doctor had traveled with Time Lord. It was such a joy—such a relief—to be standing next to someone who knew—who really understood—the technology of the TARDIS. It would, however, be unbearable if she found out that he felt that way.

So he continued to scowl. "We're going to the Dalek camps," he announced. "Your idea. Not mine."

Missy rolled her eyes. "Well, if you must be so unoriginal, go right ahead. Set the coordinates."

The Doctor once again circled the TARDIS console, deliberately walking away from her as quickly as possible. Of course, she followed him, watching every lever-flip and dial-set he performed. Surprisingly, she made no comment.

He stopped in front of the scanner, one hand on the dematerialization lever. Had it been Clara standing beside him, he would have smiled at her and seen her inflated eyes with all their makeup (though, to be honest, he could never quite tell whether she was wearing it or not) and her big smile.

Now it was Missy who met his eyes, and while she might have been smiling, he wasn't. Daleks and the Master. 1300 years since the Time War, and suddenly it felt as if he had never stopped fighting. No matter how hard he tried, nothing changed.

"If we do this, you'll tell me the coordinates of Gallifrey," he said.

"Why so keen to go home already? The fun's just begun." She winked at him. "We both know I'm the only one you _missed_ there."

"I—"

"I think someone's feeling a bit _guilty_ …"

" _No_." He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Not guilty. Never guilty. I did what I had to—for them. I had to save them."

"Sure you did."

Why did she have to do that? Every inch of her voice dripping with sarcasm, saying exactly the right thing to make him feel horrible. And she knew it too.

"You ran away!" he shouted, jabbing a finger at her.

She jumped back in mock surprise.

"You have nothing to say to me about the Time War. You deserted the Time Lords when they needed you. I kept fighting and you—you shut up and don't say a thing about that to me ever again!" And, his anger having run its course, he sagged, leaning a hand against the TARDIS console, his head bowed. He was surprised at how tired his voice sounded when he spoke next. "When we're done with this, you'll tell me where Gallifrey is, and we're going home."

"We?"

"We."

He flipped the dematerialization lever, and the familiar wheezing of the TARDIS filled the air. Missy cackled.

The Doctor fought back the deluge of memories that were assaulting him now. The Time War stayed locked away in his memory most of the time. Sometimes, he could barely remember that he had ever fought in the war. Sometimes, he could pretend that he had gone straight from being handsome and floppy-haired to all leather and ears. But now he could hear the cries of Daleks and the sounds of chaos in Arcadia, he could see the Skaro Degradations and the Possibility Engine, the Tear of Isha and the thousands of other superweapons that the Time Lords had used on the Daleks, indiscriminately wiping out cities, planets, even whole races who happened to be in the wrong place. The Daleks, it had all come down to the Daleks. There was no race in the universe that he hated more—there was no race in the universe that he hated so much that his hatred of them _defined_ who he was.

_I see into your soul, Doctor. I see beauty. I see divinity. I see HATRED._

_You ARE a good Dalek._

He seethed just thinking about it. If he was a good Dalek, then he should do what a good Dalek did best: kill other Daleks.

It was a short flight. The wheezing sound abated with a dull thunk that signaled materialization seconds after he pulled the lever.

Missy danced towards the door, swinging her umbrella. She crooked her finger at him.

The Doctor shoved past her and threw open the door. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an old watch—designed on the same principle as the one he had traded for a coat in Victorian London—and checked the time.

"4266," he told Missy. "The planet Androvenia in the Yvarniz System. Colonized by the Daleks…" He checked his watch again. "Two months ago."

He'd be willing to bet anything that it was, by the smell of the atmosphere and the way purple mists clustered here and there across the surface. He peered out into the mists, forever the color of grape, and thought he could hear the grating voices of Daleks and the cries of humans.

That sound had made his blood burn for nearly as long as he had been the Doctor. He tried to be nonviolent. He tried to bring peace. And all they ever did was come back more powerful and destroy the people he loved. So he made an exception to his nonviolence for them. If anyone deserved to be attacked by an army of Cybermen, it was the Daleks.

"Let's go," he growled at Missy.

Her eyes twinkled. " _Let's go_ ," she growled, imitating him.

The second they stepped from the time capsule, the alarm sounded.

"INTRUDER! SEEK! LOCATE! EXTERMINATE!"

The Doctor flinched. Missy simply smiled wider and twirled her umbrella. He tried to turn the flinch into a scratch, but the harm was done.

"Give the order," she whispered in his ear.

As the Daleks, still in the pale blue casings of their early years, trundled through the mist, the Doctor raised the bracelet to this mouth. "Destroy the Daleks."

The Cybermen appeared so quickly even Missy jumped. The Daleks, for once, didn't stand a chance. The Doctor had known they wouldn't. It was too early in their timeline. They were still weak, pathetic. Their hatred still equaled the Doctor's, but their power was nothing compared to his now.

"EXTER—"

Three blasts from the Cybermen's wrist guns smashed the Daleks' armour and blew the hateful creature inside to bits.

"They've had a bit of an upgrade since the two of you last me," the Doctor said. "Or will meet, in your case."

The Cybermen clanked their way through the double doors of the TARDIS, forming up two-by-two outside. Half of them began to march off into the mist, while the other half clicked into fight mode and took off into the brilliant magenta sky, all searching for more Daleks to destroy. The sight, the Doctor reflected, would have terrified him had he not been the one to give them the order. He had seen too much destruction at the hands of the Cybermen.

Missy tugged on his arm. "Let's you and me go watch the fireworks! It's no good standing here with nothing to see."

They walked alongside the marching ranks of Cybermen. The more Cybermen exited the TARDIS, the more Daleks appeared to attempt to repel them. The Daleks were obliterated wherever they appeared. Missy slipped her arm through his, as if they were skipping through a field of flowers, no massacring Daleks. Then again, she probably saw little difference between the two activities.

The purple mist eventually cleared to reveal a cavernous mine. Humans in chains filled the mine, cutting into the red and orange rocks with primitive tools.

He felt sick. The Daleks didn't need humans to work these mines. They never did. They simply wanted the humans to suffer. They wanted to demonstrate their superiority by reducing those they conquered to this—slaves.

"Up here, love." Missy tugged on his arm.

There was a little outcropping of rock that overlooked the whole hellish pit. It must have been some sort of command station, because some broken Dalek casings littered the area and the putrid stink of fried Daleks mutants wafted through the air.

Missy sat down on a rock near the edge, folding her legs beneath herself elegantly. The Doctor couldn't help but be slightly impressed. He couldn't have been half as elegant as that, and he wasn't learning how to be a woman for the first time. The Master had always been able to outdo him in that sort of thing.

The Doctor didn’t sit. He stood near the edge of the outcropping, watching as the Cybermen marauded through the mines, green laser fire and white extermination beams lit up the pit. Occasionally, a Dalek would get lucky and a Cyberman would fall, but they were outnumbered. It was an easy victory. A simple massacre.

Some of the humans were looking up at him, eyes wide. One, a small one who couldn't have been older than 30—or was it 10? He could never judge human ages—lifted up his arms as if in praise.

The Doctor staggered back. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. He'd been so caught up in the idea of revenge against the Daleks, he had forgotten what he was really doing here. He shouldn't be standing above these people as some sort of conqueror. The Doctor wasn't the general of some grand liberation army.

But he was. That was exactly what he was. And for the first time since they had arrived on Androvenia, he was properly ashamed of it. This was not him. This was not how it was supposed to be. He should have been standing among the humans in the pits, not above them. He should be fighting against the army, not bringing it along with him.

"It's less bloody this way," he said aloud. As if Missy cared. As if she could ever understand why he was wrong to do this, why he needed to justify himself somehow.

"Of course, love," she said. She got to her feet and wrapped her arms around his neck.

He was starting to think that she did it on purpose, that she knew it made him uncomfortable.

"No innocent lives were lost," he said. He shouldn't have wanted her to tell him he was right. He shouldn't have believed her opinion meant anything. She was bananas, evil. She admitted it herself. "Every other time I've met the Daleks, people have died fighting for freedom. I—not this time."

Missy still had her arms around his neck, and her face was inches from his. "You gonna give me a kiss to say thanks for all those things you just said, or do I have to stand here all day with my arms around your neck?"

That was what she wanted? Suddenly, he was feeling a bit off balance. Normally, he would have said no. He should have pulled away right now. But he was the general of an army of Cybermen that had just massacred a mine full of Daleks. To hell with what he should do. He aimed a kiss at her mouth, and managed to hit the target. Their lips connected for the briefest moment.

The taste of her remained on his lips. If she asked again, he thought, he'd kiss her for a little longer.

Right now, however, he had a more pressing matter. The people below them were clapping. A cheer sprang up from among them, carrying through the mine.

Missy, slightly breathless from their kiss, winked at him and bowed theatrically. She pushed him forward. "Go on, give a speech."

The Doctor turned his back on them.

"They want to hear a speech from their liberator, Doctor," Missy said, giving him innocent eyes. "Tell them they're free."

The Doctor spun around and glared down at the humans in the mine. "Stop clapping! I'm not your hero, and I'm not your liberator."

They clapped harder.

"Stop! Stop clapping, I mean it! I came here to destroy Daleks and I've done that. You're free. Go."

He stomped away from the edge.

Missy bowed again. "Aw…don’t listen to him," she said, as if they were all five year olds. "We're your saviors! Of course you can clap."

The Doctor grabbed her by the arm. "We don't accept praise for this. We are going back to the TARDIS and flying away."

"Oh, but they're so—"

"Do as you are told!" he shouted, felling a pang as he remembered shouting the same thing at Clara.

She made a face at him, but danced off towards the TARDIS. As she disappeared into the purple mist, she turned around and called, "Oh, Doctor, you're so much more fun when you're angry."

The Doctor trudged after her. He called into the mists, where he knew she could hear him, "I want the coordinates of Gallifrey! I've conquered something—that's what you wanted. It's time for your end of the bargain."

When he reached the TARDIS door, Missy was leaning against it, her arms crossed across her chest. "But Doctor," she said. "What makes you think I would ever give you up so easily?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figure the only species the Doctor would really be willing to attack with an army would be the Daleks, since he's done it before. Unfortunately, the Cybermen got their butts kicked in Doomsday when they met the Daleks, so I made the Daleks the much less powerful 1960s Daleks, and it all worked out. 
> 
> Also, I invented Androvenia and the Yvarniz System. I figured the Doctor wouldn't go back to some other invasion that he'd already fought off because, well, he'd already fought it off. He'd want to fix something he hadn't fixed yet.


	3. Emperor of a Thousand Galaxies (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay in updating! I've had a half finished draft sitting in my notebook for months, but it never seemed to become a finished chapter (I blame the EDAs, which I started reading in December). Also, this chapter is in two parts. Partly because I have two chapters set in the same place, partly because I couldn't think of two separate chapter titles, and partly because I didn't want to delay any longer in posting so I could post them both as one chapter. Hope you enjoy!

"I took your army. I did everything you could have wanted. What more do you want?" the Doctor leaned over the console, craning his head around the time rotor to glare at Missy.

The pleasant hum of the TARDIS contrasted with the shouting voices. Both of them were dancing around the console, dodging the puddles of brilliant blue mud that the Cybermen had tracked back through the TARDIS. It was amazing that his old girl wasn't throwing a fit.

"Oh, please, those few Daleks? That was nothing, love."

The Doctor turned and paced in the other direction, keeping the console between him and her.

She appeared on the other side. "Oh come, Doctor. I want to see another planet. You wouldn't deny me that, would you?"

"Who do you think I am? A cabbie?" the Doctor said. "My TARDIS isn't your personal taxi service."

"My boyfriend."

"You have—" The Doctor stopped. "What did you say?"

Missy gave a little shrug. Her smile widened. "I think you're my boyfriend."

The Doctor just stared at her. It had been thousands of years since he and the Master—since the Master thought of him in anything approaching that capacity.

Hadn't it?

"Well," he said, looking down at the console and setting the coordinates without looking at what they lead to, just to have something to do with his hands. How the hell was he supposed to respond to that? "Well—"

"Well?"

Perhaps this would be a good time to kiss her again? He was sure he must have known this kind of thing in one of his previous incarnations, but now he felt like a bumbling idiot.

His hearts were racing. He had made a deal with Missy—an army for Gallifrey. That was all it had been – the deal, him compromising everything he believed in to get her to give him their home back. It wasn't anything more—was it?

"I—er—"

She was standing beside him now. He looked up into her dark eyes. Her whole expression had a wicked air about it—the arched eyebrows and crooked smile, the black paint (makeup, at a guess) round her eyes. And yet, she was beautiful. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time. Her whole aspect was breathtaking.

He really _was_ Doctor Idiot! He'd spend a year living in a cage while the Master took over the world, and all he'd done afterwards was ask the Master to travel with him. Now, he had exactly that, and he was going to throw it away—for what? Because the Cybermen made him a little queasy?

This was his chance. His chance to truly show her the beauty of the universe. And maybe his chance to get her to continue calling him her boyfriend, however childish it was. 

"Well," he turned his blushing face the way, "If you—if you say so. One more trip. Where do you want to go?"

"Oh Doctor," Missy said, grabbing his arm.

He felt their minds connect for a brief moment she tilted her head against his. Just the briefest touch, but there was so much contained in it—the world of her emotions, twisted and confused, as his old friend's had always been, but containing such genuine affection. "Thank you."

He pulled away. He had to maintain some semblance of coolness, otherwise he simply start tripping over his own feet like his previous incarnation.

She smiled that maniacal smile of hers at him. "I've got a teensy idea where to go. You'll love it. Promise."

She moved to the controls and began typing and flipping switches. The Doctor stayed where he'd been standing but craned his head. What was she doing?

"No, no peeking. You'll spoil the surprise!"

She flipped the dematerialization lever, and the Doctor ran to the controls anyway. He took a moment to decipher where they were headed. The Master had always been better at that sort of stuff that he had.

"The Tiberian Spiral Galaxy – the year—the year the Cyber Wars ended." He looked up, horrified. "Why would I want to go there?"

The TARDIS gave a mighty jolt, as if she agreed with him. He grabbed the console to keep from being thrown back onto the railing. They landed just as a stack of books that the Doctor had set out in front of one of his blackboards toppled down the steps and slid to a rest at his feet.

"Those were alphabetized," he said quietly, surveying the pile.

"You'll get over it, love. Come on, I want to show you your surprise."

"It isn’t much of a surprise. I already know what it is." The Doctor fiddled with the scanner. He could never trust the Master, never. Of course she'd pick sometime like this. "This is the end of the Cyber Wars. The Tiberian Galaxy gets destroyed. It's a fixed point in time."

He glanced up from the scanner, which was showing him an entirely useless picture of the grey interior wall of some sort of ship or station. He was getting some odd gravity readings…he gave the scanner a tap, but they remained where they were. Missy was rolling her eyes at him.

"How can you ignore that? There are moments in history you simply cannot change!" He was losing his cool again. Again. "I can't—I can't go and fix anything here. Time would _fall apart_. Everything would _disintegrate_. And you know that."

And yet she just smiled enigmatically and opened the door with a squeak.

"Did you hear me? There's nothing we can do. The Tiberian Galaxy dies. Maybe you want to watch that, but why would you think that I—"

She raised a hand and put a finger on his lips. "Because you _can_ change it. You have an army! Even the laws of time are no match for you."

"I've tried that before. It was a mistake," the Doctor said, turning to walk back to the console. "We're leaving—you can choose somewhere else."

It had been so long ago…the base on Mars… Adelaide Brooke… the flash of a gun through the front window. He couldn’t change things, even when he tried.

"But Doctor," Missy said, her voice slightly higher. "If you leave, who will save me from these soldiers?"

The Doctor spun around. Missy was floating weightless in a tight corridor of rough grey metal paneling, her black skirt billowing around her knees. So those gravity readings _were_ accurate.

The Doctor rushed to the door. Three soldiers, holding, as always, guns, floated in front of her. They clutched flexible straps that hung from the walls and ceiling. Judging by the tough looking grey and black uniforms, this was a human warship—but what had happened to the gravity?

"Freeze!" one of them shouted predictably.

The Doctor ignored him and instead held a hand out to Missy.

She tapped the TARDIS and floated further away. The Doctor wanted to punch something. He should have known by now that the Master could never be trusted. She knew how he operated. She knew that he would never leave her stranded with these soldiers. Which meant that, logically, he had to go and explore this fixed point in time.

He stepped out of the TARDIS, feeling that swooping feeling in the pit of his stomach as the gravity disappeared. His step propelled him too far through the zero-g and he crashed into Missy. It was all quite undignified.

"Sorry," the Doctor said, disentangling himself from Missy. "We came here by mistake. If you'll just let us get back to our…"

A soldier stepped between him and the TARDIS. His face was lined, so he was probably old by human standards, and contained two thin, twitchy eyes. There was some sort of insignia of rank on his jacket, which the Doctor might have recognized if he got a better look.

"Intruders. I'm—I'm not surprised," he said, pointing a shaking gun at Missy and the then Doctor, and back again. "Someone clear their…capsule…out of the secure area. Lovelace, Harting, get to it! Everyone else, bring these two with me."

Despite his barked orders, the soldier man was clearly quite nervous. Great. Just what the Doctor needed right now. Scared humans. Scared human _soldiers._ Scared human soldiers who, as usual, thought that they already knew why he was there. The Doctor was _not_ in the mood to put up with that today. "Put away the gun. Try again. Get it right."

He crossed his arms. He wasn't moving until they put those guns away.

A minute or so later, they were both handcuffed and being forcibly dragged away. The soldiers' guns were still trained on them.

The ship was exceedingly strange. After a few moments of traversing the thin corridors, he realized that its internal gravity was generated using rotational motion. The whole ship rotated about an axis that ran through its center, so that the gravity increased as you got further from the axis. Considering their weightlessness, they must have been right in the middle of the ship's central column when they'd landed. No wonder the TARDIS was confused.  

But he was absolutely sure that this ship was obsolete by thousands of years. Rotational gravity had been scrapped long ago in favor of graviton generators. Even the metallic grey paneling was centuries off. Where had they dug up a wreck of a ship like this from? And why?

He grumbled to himself. Now he was curious, as Missy had known he would be. He simply had to know what was going on with this ship.

"A bit of advice, love," Missy said as they floated down the corridor—or was it up the corridor? "If you haven't got the gun, don't be the rude one."

"I'm always the rude one," he snapped back.

Missy looked so proud of him. He could feel a blush spreading up his face.

Then she snapped back to a more businesslike air. "Of course, a few of those Cybermen back in your TARDIS would have been adequate to get us out of this."

The soldiers shoving them forwards suddenly stopped at the word "Cybermen."

The Doctor noticed that he was sinking towards the ground, and put out a foot to support himself. The gravity was increasing. Then he turned to Missy. "I'm not involving them. This is a fixed point in time. We can't have them stomping all over it."

The nervous officer suddenly shoved the Doctor against the wall. He pressed his gun to the Doctor's temple. It was unpleasantly cold. Why couldn't they make the tips of their guns out of something with a lower heat capacity? It would make these sorts of things much less unpleasant.

"I knew it couldn't just be the two of you. The Cyberiad would do anything to get their hands on this ship." The officer took a deep breath. "You are going to tell me right now where these Cybermen are on our ship and you are going to tell us how we can dispose of them. And you're going to do it quickly."

Valuable to the Cyberiad? An idea came to the Doctor. Could this be _the_ ship….? He pushed off the ground and floated a little ways into the air before slowly sinking back down, his brow furrowed, before saying aloud, "Nope. Can't be."

"What?"

"Mr.—"

"General," the nervous officer immediately corrected him. "General Lin of the Tiberian Galactic Forces."

Lin. Lin, Lin—he was sure he'd heard of a General Lin at some point.

"General Lin, what's wrong with your gravity?"

Lin, almost unconsciously, pushed off the ground slightly and let himself sink. "Nothing's wrong with our gravity." He steadied his gun. "Is that what your Cybermen are doing here? Here to sabotage our environmental systems?" He turned to the woman nearest him. "Manning, Jenkins, Powell, do a full sweep of life support and environment. Now!"

The three soldiers hurried off with that odd jumping and kicking motion necessary in extremely low gravity. There were only about five or so soldiers left with them now.

The Doctor didn't bother correcting the mistaken general. If he wanted to send his troops on wild goose chases, it wasn't his problem. "Your gravity is thousands of years out of date. Where did you get this ship from?"

"The technical specifications of our ship are not relevant," Lin said. "Where are the Cybermen?"

"Nowhere. We didn't bring any _Cybermen_ onto your ship. We don't even want to _be_ here!"

General Lin fired a blast into the wall just over the Doctor's shoulder. The energy from the weapon dissipated into the metal wall, which was suddenly hot to the touch. The Doctor jumped forward as his jacket sizzled.

"Next time, that'll be your heart getting fried," Lin said. "Where are the Cybermen?"

There was something the Doctor was missing. Something that didn't add up. And why did the name Lin sound so familiar?

The realization came to him all at once. "I understand!" the Doctor shouted. "It's a suicide mission!"

Lin's face drained of color.

"You're driving the oldest ship in the fleet because it’s the only one you could spare to get blown to pieces. That's where I know your name. General Lin, the one who ended it all. You're here to plant an explosive device straight into the center of the galaxy and then—well, you'd never get out of range in time. The galaxy goes up and you go with it." The Doctor's voice grew softer. "Better that way. No sleepless nights remembering all the children who died to end the Cyber Wars. No guilt to the end of your days wondering if there could have been another way. Just set the charge and you go up with it."

"We know what we're sacrificing to end this war. We've assessed the costs. They were deemed acceptable. This is our—our only option." General Lin said. The Doctor wasn't sure he'd ever heard someone say something so concrete with less certainty. Then, almost as an afterthought, Lin added, "The Cyberiad wouldn't have sent you here if they didn't know our mission. I don't know how you received this information, but it doesn't matter now."

"I'm not working for the Cyberiad," the Doctor said.

"No, he's just got a big bad Cyberman army waiting in his ship to come out and attack whomever he pleases. He's simply too modest to admit it."

General Lin didn't seem to know what to say. "Who is this woman?" he demanded of the Doctor.

"Still in the room," Missy said. "I'm Missy—short for Mistress. This is my boyfriend, the Doctor."

Lin turned his gun on her. The Doctor attempted to knock it out of his hands, but with his wrists cuffed, all he managed was to crash into Lin. Two soldiers surged forward and pulled him back. Someone pointing a gun at her brought back one too many memories of that poor woman—Lucy Saxon….

"Okay, Mistress—"

"Oh, please, call me Missy."

"Okay, Mistress Missy, you're going to—"

"I'm going to? It's his army. Ask him."

She was doing this intentionally. Putting them in danger to force him to use the army. Well, he wouldn’t.

"Sir," one of the soldiers beside Lin spoke for the first time.

"What, Pates?"

"Sir, I've just scanned both of them. Neither has any mental link to the Cyberiad. If this Doctor has control of a Cyberman army, it would be through a piece of technology that links him them, probably on his person."

It appeared Christmas had come early for General Lin. He motioned to two soldiers. "Search them."

It was an uncomfortable few minutes. The Doctor hated people touching him at the best of times, but the two soldiers rummaging through his pockets was far, far worse. In the final assessment, they came up with a half-eaten package of biscuits, a pair of hyperfractal sunglasses, a signed copy of _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ , two medallions from the Festival of Offerings, his sonic screwdriver, and—of course—the control bracelet.

From Missy, they got the vaporization device that she used just as frequently to take selfies as vaporize people and a squashed rose with a dried brown stem. He stared at it. Why the hell would someone carry around a dead rose?

It only took General Lin a few moments to figure out how the control bracelet worked, his eyes wide in wonder. The Doctor cursed himself for not locking the TARDIS doors to the outside. No one could get _in_ , but that didn't stop the Cybermen from getting _out_. If he ever got the chance, he'd have to fix that feature.

But there was nothing to be done now. The Doctor listened helplessly as the crashing steps of the Cybermen drew closer and closer, muffled by their relative weightlessness. It was more of the creak and rustle of metal legs than the honest stomping he was used to. The group of soldiers all lifted their guns. General Lin was white as a sheet.

The Cybermen stopped at the end of the corridor, their metallic bodies perfectly still. The Doctor knew they were still pouring out of the TARDIS, filling up the ship. He made a lunge for the bracelet as well as he could with his hands cuffed, but was roughly pulled back by one of the soldiers.

The Cybermen spoke. "General Lin. We await your orders."

Lin looked the Cyberman up and down. He turned to the man nearest him. "A real Cyberman army..." he breathed. "At our command. Forget just winning the Cyber Wars. We could expand the human empire to a million galaxies! We could do anything!"

The Doctor and Missy looked at each other. Despite the number of schemes the Master had come up with to destroy large parts of the universe, the Doctor had a feeling that even she didn't want a bunch of scared humans in charge of an all-powerful army.

"The second we get out of here," the Doctor said. "I'm throwing that army into a supernova."

Missy, for the first time, looked genuinely frightened. "If we do get out of here."


	4. Emperor of a Thousand Galaxies (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...this is actually part two of three. It keeps expanding. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

This was not looking good. The Doctor had been in some tough binds before, but as the Cybermen marched them through the corridor and around the ship's drive core, presumably down towards whatever cell block the ship had, he had to admit that this looked pretty bleak. Missy's army was supposed to be unbeatable. Unbeatable in the hands of a desperate human was about as bad as things got.

He focused on his surroundings to take his mind off of it. The ship's ancient drive core. The primitive antimatter pumping system didn't exactly give him the comfort he was looking for. The generators groaned and strained just to produce a thin containment field. The ship wasn't just anachronistic—it was old and dying.

"On the off chance that this will work, tell me your plan," the Doctor said to the Cybermen.

No response from the blank-faced metal men. He scowled and slouched.

Missy laughed.

"It was worth a shot," he protested.

"I know."

The words hardly sounded like her. So serious and demure. Her eyes were wide as she met his, and there was a desperate hunger in her gaze.

"There's a way. We'll find one," the Doctor promised. "We'll make it out somehow."

"I believe you," she said, "my love."

The words were so raw. Something was different about her. It had been since they had started traveling together. She cared. But no, she always cared about her schemes for death and destruction. Here, when the universe was at stake, she cared about him.

For her, he would find a way out. He'd do better than that. He'd find a way out and, if she really did care about him, he would show her what he cared about. He would show her his universe. All the wonders out there.

And he would—it was difficult to admit it to himself, but things were very difficult as it was, so what did it matter—he would show her that he loved her. That in some way, he always had.

On the other side of the drive core was a lift. They were thrown in, floating slowly to the floor in the low gravity. The lift creaked ominously as it slowly lowered them down towards the outside of the ship. The gravity slowly increased until the lift was uncomfortably crowded with five Cybermen and two Time Lords all standing on the ground. 

The creaking grew louder, and the lift began to shake.

The Doctor looked at Missy. "Outdated hardware, aches and creaks. If I didn't know better—"

Missy listened to the loud creaking. She staggered as the lift shook harder, and grasped the arm of one of the Cybermen to stay upright. "I don't know better, and I'd say this ship's falling from the sky." It seemed that, to her, Christmas had come early. Her mad eyes gleamed. "Weeeeeeee!"

Another jolt knocked the Doctor to the ground. He braced himself against a wall and tried to keep from sliding across the floor.

She was right. There was no doubt that they were caught in some sort of gravity field, probably that of a planet. Had the old drive core finally failed? Was it the added mass of the Cybermen? Or was General Lin simply doing something incredibly stupid? Whatever the cause, the ship was crashing.

The Cyberman next to the Doctor's head punched the lift controls, and the lift reversed. "All active cybermen are required on the bridge," it said to the rest in the lift.

The Doctor looked at Missy. Perhaps it actually _was_ Christmas.

At the top, the door to the lift gave an old-fashioned _ding!_ and opened to a frenzied scene. Men and women dashed about between banks of touchscreens, typing frantically, grabbing onto whatever could keep them upright. The Doctor stepped from the lift just in time to see a man trip beside a bank of computers and crack his head on the low ceiling. He fell to the ground and didn't move.

The Doctor rushed across the corrugated floor of the bridge, swaying in the rapidly shifting gravity. Missy didn't even seem to have noticed the man fall.

General Lin intercepted the Doctor on his way to the fallen man. "What have you done?"

"That is not the question. The question is, do you want to get out of this alive? We haven't done anything to your ship and we are your best option if you want to survive this crash."

The General stared at the Doctor, apparently lost for words.

The Doctor didn't wait for an answer. He rushed to the closest computer bank. "Let's see what's wrong with your ship." He accessed the central scanner, and peered at the readings, trying to decipher what was happening. The next jolt sent him face-first into the touchpad.

General Lin seemed to be regaining his powers of speech.

"The main drive's failed and we're caught in the gravity field of Jarius 4. If we can't get something online…" His tan face was pale.

"Boom."

General Lin gulped and nodded.

"Can you jettison the weapon? A galaxy destroying bomb in a wreck, not a good combination."

"We're can't leave that weapon drifting in space."

"You don't have a choice! If this ship goes down, that weapon will to wipe out a galaxy! So much for your hijacking of our army to find a better solution."

Suddenly, Missy was by his side. "What's all this fuss about? We'll save your ship, but only if you give us back that army. But you could just keep on crashing, too. Hilariously short lifespans, humans, you don't really get much from surviving, do you?"

The Doctor stared at her. "How?"

"You may not know that you can tow a ship out of a gravity sink using a TARDIS, love, but I do. Lucky one of us passed their driving test."

The Doctor glared at her. "I did learn that," he muttered.

So much for him being the hero who saved her and showed her the good in the universe.

"You can save us?" Lin's pale face twitched hopefully.

Of course. Why hadn't he thought of it earlier? "Yes, we can save you. And your ship and your bomb."

Lin turned away. He touched the bracelet on his arm, and then pulled his hand away. He seemed to be teetering on the edge of a decision. Another jolt to the ship knocked him against a panel, and he turned back to the Doctor and Missy.

He ripped the control bracelet off of his arm and threw it at Missy. The Doctor caught it on the way to her and slapped it on his wrist.

He met Missy's gaze. "Thank you. You've probably saved an entire ship's crew. Just think of all the lives you could save if you always used your mind for—something other than tearing the world apart. You could be amazing."

"Oh, but what's the fun in that? All those people calling _help me, help me!_ I don't have your patience."

The Doctor didn't believe that. Somewhere, she had to know that there was more to life than destroying everything. "We need to get back to the TARDIS. How much time do we have?"

"Estimated five minutes to impact," General Lin said.

"Then we better start hurrying."

***

The wreckage wasn't pretty, but then, the Doctor had never known a wreck that was. His hands and his jacket were stained with blood from pulling the injured, the dying, the dead from the crushed spacecraft. The sky above matched their blood red color as the sun set over the eastern horizon. There was nothing to see, not for miles, but the endless expanse of cool metallic grey sand.

A cold wind whipped through Missy's hair. She was standing just beyond the wreckage, next to the TARDIS, watching the final cleanup effort. She was so beautiful, just standing there, her dark hair and skirts billowing around her.

She was also looking at him. He looked away instantly, cursing himself. How long had he been staring?

He turned his gaze to the smoking wreck. The TARDIS had barely prevented the ship from being squashed on impact, slowing its descent in the lower atmosphere. It had been too late for anything else by the time they had reached his old ship.

General Lin approached the Doctor from beside a broken airlock. His dark hair was plastered to his face with sweat, and the physical exertion of the last hour seemed to have lessened his nervous demeanor.

"Five dead. Ten injured. Four able-bodied. And you two." He seemed resigned to his own news. "And the weapon's intact."

General Lin gazed up at the sky. The Doctor followed his gaze, but there was nothing there—nothing but sky, red fading to black. The General squatted and picked up a handful of sand, letting it sift through his fingers.

After a moment of watching it fall, he threw it away with a violence. "We have to detonate the weapon. We came here to do a job. I've lost four soldiers—they didn't give their lives so we could turn back now."

"You military minds are all the same. Complete the objective at any cost. Do your duty. Has it ever occurred to you, General, that perhaps your orders are wrong?"

General Lin stood and dusted off his hands on his bloody fatigues. "Once. I got over it."

The Doctor mentally chided himself. He was letting his anger cloud his judgment. This wasn't his fight. It was time to leave. Time to get back in the TARDIS and let history run its course.

"Once," General Lin repeated. "I doubted once. I lost my nerve. I let the Cybermen take a planet when I should have destroyed it. It was inhabited—the native species was peaceful. I couldn't stand the idea of killing two billion innocent people.

"I was a coward—I am a coward. You know it. I can see it in how you look at me! Scared General Lin. Even my children won't look me in the eye. I do this, I'm not a coward anymore. I'll be remembered as a hero. The man who ended the Cyber Wars!" His voice rose to a fever pitch, and then dropped low again. "You aren't going to change my mind, Doctor. This is the only option—my only option."

"You aren't going to change my mind, Doctor. This is the only option."

The Doctor opened his mouth to argue, then shut it. Had he really been that different? Humanity had taken honor from Lin the same way the Time Lords had taken Cinder from the Doctor. And he had said _no more._

But he had saved himself from making that decision, that terrible choice. This was fixed, but—but so was the destruction of Gallifrey. He couldn't allow someone else to make the same wrong choice he had. He had saved himself—he would save General Lin.

He looked at Missy. This was what she wanted, wasn't it? What he said he'd never do. But, he frantically justified to himself, he could do this right. He could save General Lin, and he could show his old friend that it was possible to change history for the better without making it fall apart. Then he, too, could have his friend back.

That was what it was about in the end, wasn't it? Not being alone. Every principle, every dash of goodwill, every bit of respect for the laws of time—they all fell to the wayside when faced with the prospect of _not being alone_ anymore.

"It's never the only option," the Doctor said. "That's what you tell yourself so you can stomach it. That's what your children will tell themselves every time they look up at the sky and see a patch of stars missing and remember that Daddy was the one who did it! You think they'll remember you as  a hero? No, you'll be a murderer. A noble, one, but one just the same. A billion trillion people wiped out of the sky. It isn't the only way. It's the coward's way."

The Doctor was in General Lin's face now, staring eye to eye with the General. Genocidal soldier to genocidal soldier.

"Then tell me—what is your better option?"

The Doctor put an arm around Missy, carefully, hoping that it was the right sort of gesture. "Our army."

The Doctor held the control bracelet to his mouth and shouted a marching order to the Cybermen who had crawled out of the wreckage and were standing at attention just behind it. He looked at General Lin. "We will win you the Cyber Wars." 


	5. Emperor of a Thousand Galaxies (Part 3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is _actually_ the last part of Emperor of a Thousand Galaxies. I almost added a part four, but no, there will be a different title for the next chapter.

It had taken just over a month. That shocked the Doctor more than anything else.

They'd released the Cybermen on the galaxy with a few short commands, then jumped forward in time to see how it all turned out. Quick and clean. That was how it had turned out. Every Cyberman that didn't belong to the Doctor was destroyed with barely a dozen humans dead. An unquestionable victory, at so little cost.

He stood in the in the console room of the TARDIS with Missy, looking at the human reports on the end of war. From the news feed now running across the monitor on the console, he could see that General Lin was to be honored as a hero. He was, after all, the one who had actually fought alongside the army.

The army was currently stationed on Jarius 4, as the Doctor had instructed them, though a few Cybermen had been chosen as decoration for the Victory Parade—a human had just knocked on the TARDIS doors to ask him for permission. Only humans would parade weapons that caused such destruction down the streets and shower them with flower petals and cheers.

Another knock on the TARDIS doors. What could the humans want now? He hoped they weren't going to ask _him_ to march in their Victory Parade—that was a step too far.

"Doctor, Mistress." General Lin's voice called through the doors. "Have a moment to spare from saving whole galaxies?"

The Doctor walked over to the doors and pulled them open. "You've developed a sense of humor," he said. "It took you long enough."

"There's no time for a sense of humor when you're blowing up a galaxy," General Lin said, stepping past the Doctor and nodding at Missy. "A moment?"

"Yes, we have a moment. Otherwise I wouldn't have let you into my TARDIS."

The General fidgeted with his uniform. His face colored in a bit. "I've been asked to choose the next Emperor."

The Doctor stared at him. "Well, congratulations. Don't let us keep you from it, then. And if you're here for advice, too bad. This is something you have to choose on your own. I didn't even know your emperor was dead until you walked in here."

"No, Doctor. I'd like to ask _you_ to be the next emperor."

The Doctor laughed. He should have expected this—people always tried to give him titles. President of Gallifrey, President of Earth—now this. "Me? I'm not even human. Think, General. Even soldiers have more brainpower than that."

"There's no better choice. You saved us all. You stopped me from using that Cyberman army for conquest." He bowed his head. "Earth needs a wise ruler like that."

Missy emerged from behind the Doctor and grabbed his arm. "You should at least think it through, love. If someone asks you if you want to—"

"Be queen of the universe, you say yes," the Doctor said, though he was sure that wasn't what she had meant to say.

But Clara had turned it down. She had been smart to do so. She's always been smarter about those things than he had. He was starting to see that now that she was no longer around.

"Doctor, I was ready to be the man who killed a billion billion people, and you stopped me," General Lin said. Those two months fighting alongside the Doctor's army had done him well. His nervousness was almost completely gone, replaced by, it seemed, an annoyingly stubborn confidence. "I don't have to live with that now. And I think you know what that's like."

The Doctor looked at Missy. She was watching him with that hopeful face she had on so much these days. Like she was waiting to see what he would do—could do.

Okay, then. This one was for her. Because he had never stopped loving her, and this way, he would never have to. He could probably run away after they crowned—instated—whatever—him anyway.

"Missy—love—" The word that rolled so easily off of Missy's tongue felt strange on his own. "Do you want to be queen of the universe?"

Her face split into a wicked grin. "Yes."

"Then I'll be emperor and she'll be empress. Both of us. Otherwise, no deal."

"I'm sure that will be—acceptable. Someone will be coming by later to discuss—everything." He opened the door, but then turned back. "I truly am thankful."

When General Lin had gone, the Doctor looked at Missy for a moment. She grinned wickedly at him. He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. The silence stretched between them. What was she thinking?

Finally, he asked, "What's with the eyes? Not those ones, the other ons. The puppy eyes."

Missy's grin widened. She leaned over the Doctor's shoulder and whispered in his ear, "You want to hear a secret?"

The Doctor pulled back. "What secret?"

"Oh, you'll hate me for it."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow.

"They were fake! Joke's on you!" she giggled and danced away around the console. "You didn't want to change history, love. Guess a few puppy eyes from me are all it takes and all those little morals go straight out the window."

"I couldn't let him destroy a galaxy. Yes, you changed my mind. But that isn't _bad_ , that's—think of all the people we saved."

"You couldn't let me see you let him destroy a galaxy. Teensy bit of a difference."

The Doctor frowned. "I wanted to show you that the universe is worth helping. I wanted to—"

"To impress me? Well, if a few encouraging smiles are all it takes to make you change history, I'll keep it up!"

The Doctors hearts were sinking slowly to his stomach. He'd been so ready to believe those smiles were genuine. So prepared to think that Missy—just maybe—really did love him. He'd been a fool, and she'd known he would be. The Doctor collapsed into the armchair near the steps and let his chin droop.

Then he jumped to his feet. "No."

"Sorry?"

How many times, _Doctor Idiot_? She could say she was manipulating him all she wanted—but it was a lie, and he knew it was. She just didn't want to admit that she cared for him, now that she realized he'd noticed—she wouldn't allow herself to be vulnerable.

How very like the Master.

"No—the joke isn't on me. You gave me an army because you needed me, not because you wanted history changed. Those 'encouraging smiles' weren't _fake_."

Missy turned away. When she finally turned back to him, her eyes were wide. "And what of you, love? What do you need?"

She nearly trembled as she waited for an answer.

The Doctor glared at the empty console room, a thrill of panic shooting through him. He needed the universe to be safe—but they'd altered a fixed point in time. What was going to happen now? Time itself was in danger, serious danger.

He'd thought he needed her to see what it was to do good in the universe. Yet, he had broken a fixed point in time and claimed leadership over a society that he had no business playing with—that wasn't good for the universe. No, he was becoming more like her. And for what? For her love. Of course that was the reason—that had always been the reason. He was becoming hers, not the other way around. Not the way he'd wanted it to be.

He gazed down at the bracelet on his wrist. He had billions of Cybermen at his command. He would soon be Emperor of a Thousand Galaxies. Whatever rules he had had about interfering before were gone. He'd changed history—let the consequences deal with themselves. He would continue. He would continue to make history better.

He looked up at Missy. "You win."

"I know."

"No, _you win_. You wanted me to change history with this army. I will. For you. Because what I need is—" He took a deep breath. "I need my friend back too."

And then there were the _puppy eyes_ again. Only this time, he was sure that they were genuine. His old friend, his old love, his new love.

"I—"

But Missy had already drawn the Doctor into a kiss, and his words were lost in the echoes of the TARDIS console room. He drew in her scent deeply, and—he drew away. That couldn’t be.

She smelled of home.

Missy was watching him expectantly. She opened her mouth, probably to make some witty comment, but he cut her off. "Your perfume—Gallifrey."

"Oh, you noticed," she said with an uncharacteristic shy giggle. "I thought you never would. Schlenk blossoms—your favorite."

"My favorite," he repeated. Yes, they had been. He hadn't thought about them for such a long time now. On Gallifrey, you could wade through fields full of them, their scent overpowering everything.

He drew in the scent now, leaning closer to Missy. "I need you. Not Gallifrey, not some—some universe to save. Thank you. Thank you for helping me see that."

Missy smiled her crooked smile at him. "And I need you—my Emperor of a Thousand Galaxies."

"It was just—just for you."

She simply smiled and drew him back into the kiss.

He could lose himself in her schlenk blossom scent, just as he had on Gallifrey. Missy was his only taste of home. She was his oldest friend, and she was all that he had. At that moment in time, the Doctor was sure there was nothing he wouldn't do for her.


	6. Not So Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to update this. School and work—the usual suspects—got in the way. 
> 
> This is the final chapter. Hope you enjoy!

Missy's footsteps echoed through the empty throne room. The Doctor stood at the window, looking down at the growing crowds in the square below. He could hear her growing closer, but he remained at his place at the window. Still and nonchalant, barely noticing her presence—at least he hoped that was the impression he was giving her.

The footsteps stopped halfway across the room. The Doctor's right arm twitched.

"Sorry, love. You lose at _Statues_." Her voice echoed slightly.

The Doctor turned around. The throne room appeared empty at first, its marble columns glistening in Earth's mid-morning sunlight, which filtered between the drapes on the main window. He glanced up and down the room, and his gaze finally settled on the throne. There she sat, up the marble steps on the raised dais. Her long black hair flowed down past her shoulders, shining in the sunlight.

The Doctor stared at her.

"I thought I'd give it a go," she said. "Lovely view from up here. Think I might keep it."

The Doctor continued to stare.

She rolled her eyes, and threw something at him. He jumped out of the way to see some sort of rod flying past him.

"Oh, you ruined it. You were supposed to catch that. What would I tell them if it broke?"

The Doctor finally found his voice. "You've changed."

"I let my hair down, love," she said. "Just a teensy change. You made less of a fuss last time I regenerated."

"Yes. Well." The Doctor looked down at the floor where the rod had landed. "Is that the Imperial Scepter?"

"Yes, and you mighta broke it."

"You shouldn't have that." The Doctor scowled at her.

"I shouldn't have it—yet. They won't miss it until the ceremony. By then I'll have slipped it back into its box."

The ceremony. The Doctor had been dreading it for a week now: the moment when they would stand in front of their people, officially instated as Emperor and Empress. All those people looking up to him—he didn't need that. Missy would soak it up, but he would sooner have been run off in the TARDIS and avoided the whole thing. He still might, in fact.

"You want to give it a go?" Missy shifted on the throne and patted the space beside her. "There's room for two."

There wasn't room for two. There might have been room if one of them sat on the other's lap. He leaned down and picked up the rod, then climbed the steps to the dais.

She held out her hand for the rod, but he tightened his grip. "This is going back where it belongs. You don't have to steal from your own empire."

"Well, I don't _have_ to."

She stood up from the throne and curtsied to him.

He sat gingerly on the edge of the throne. This empire was his gift to her, not the other way around. She could enjoy sitting on the throne all she wanted. He didn't have to.

"Relax, love. It's not gonna bite you."

"It might. You never know what might be lurking on a throne. The royal family of Alger Baxooi glued themselves to their own thrones so they wouldn't be distracted from the task of ruling. I could be sitting down in a sticky mess of glue."

She put a hand on his chest, just as she had—it seemed so long ago now, but it couldn't have been more than a month—in 3W, and pushed him back onto the throne.

"There's room for two," she said, and promptly settled onto his lap.

She looked up into his eyes and smiled. "See? Not so bad."

"Well." The Doctor's brain seemed stuck. "Well, when you're here, it's not—"

"Oh, just admit it. You're happy too."

The Doctor sighed, and gingerly put his arms around her. "I'm happy too."

His old friend the Master was sitting in his lap in a throne room on Earth. How couldn't he be happy? Even becoming Emperor of a Thousand Galaxies seemed worth it just to breath in her scent, to feel her body against his.

A cracking noise echoed through the empty throne room, quiet at first, but growing louder until it sounded like the very air was ripping itself apart. Missy, without getting off the Doctor's lap, turned and looked about.

A scream reverberated through the air from outside. Then another. Another. Something had set the crowd into a panic. The Doctor struggled out from beneath Missy and ran down the steps of the dais.

"Always running _towards_ the screams," Missy muttered behind him.

He ignored her and kept running. As he reached the heavy outer doors, the cracking noise and the scream cut off abruptly. The Doctor's ears rang in the silence. He slowly pulled open the door and peered out.

The square was empty. _Empty_. The Doctor ran from one end of the balcony to the other, his arms flailing about. Something had taken them, right from under his nose. His people. The people who trusted him to rule. Gone.

It was bad enough taking care of a companion. How was he supposed to find a whole square full of people who had suddenly vanished?

Missy appeared in the doorway.

"Oh, now that is beautiful. Can I keep it?" She was pointing towards the sky with her scepter.

The Doctor looked up. An enormous gash had appeared in the sky like a tear in a piece of fabric. A sinister blue fire issued from the crack, fizzling out into electric-looking bolts as it streamed towards the ground.

A bolt arced down from the gash and struck the magnolia in the center of the square. The outline of the tree burned a bright blue for a moment, and then it began to shrink. The Doctor could feel the time distortion twisting through space as the tree reduced to a sapling and then regrew into a new tree, this one twisted and knotted with no more than few leaves.

"Anarchitectural paradox," Missy observed, leaning against the door. "Best get inside before you get struck by lightning."

Anarchitectural paradox. A paradox that took individual objects, reduced them to the beginning of their timelines, and then rebuilt them according to a different possible timeline. Not always a better possible timeline, he thought, looking out at the twisted version of the tree now in front of him.

The Doctor retreated to the shelter of the doorway as another bolt struck the balcony, which reduced and rebuilt before their eyes into a set of half-formed steps leading up to nothing. The Doctor staggered and grabbed the doorknob for support, reeling with the force of the temporal waves.

By the time he had righted himself, Missy was halfway down the throne room, rubbing her head as if she had a headache—which she probably did. Temporal distortions could do that.

The Doctor ran after her. "We've got to get to the TARDIS!" he shouted.

Missy stopped rubbing her head and watched him run past. "Oh, but it's beautiful. The perfect chaos."

The Doctor stopped and faced her. "Beautiful? You think that is beautiful? A hundred people, sucked up in that vortex. Dead, reassigned to different lives, some never even born! You think that's beautiful?"

Missy shrugged innocently.

The Doctor glared at her. "Every time I try to believe that you can be something more than this, you disappoint me." He shook his head. "Fine. You don't care about the people out there? What about your own life? This paradox will spread until timelines cease to exist. The Anarchitectural paradox will eat and eat until nothing is left but random temporal events, and then even those will fall away to the void when there are no more possibilities left to come into being."

He spun on his heel and continued on towards the TARDIS.

Missy caught up to his side, her smile somewhat faded. "I hadn't forgotten, but there's no harm in enjoying a little destruction."

The Doctor didn't grace that with a response.

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, love, you're right. Such a universe would be impossible to live in. But what can be done about it?"

The Doctor stepped through the TARDIS doors. His old girl instantly touched his mind, as if trying to warn him of the paradox. He dragged a scanner over towards him and assessed the damage. If he could find an origin point, it might be possible to—

Missy, who had entered behind him, saw him drop, his head in his hands, leaning against the TARDIS console.

"Is there a problem?" she said.

"It's our paradox."

"Oh, you're too kind. I didn't think you'd truly let me keep it."

The Doctor very deliberately shut his eyes and reopened them. He forced himself to keep his voice steady. "We broke a fixed point in time. This is the consequence."

He'd only seen the effects of a broken fixed point once before, at Lake Silencio, but that had been so much simpler. With all of Earth's history condensed into one day, it had been simple to find River and reverse the paradox. Well, not simple. Weddings were never simple.

But one person remaining alive at a fixed point was nothing compared with a whole galaxy. And with random timelines sprouting up everywhere, there was no chance of finding General Lin and re-destroying the Tiberian Galaxy.

They couldn't fix it.

This was how the universe was going to end.

The bleak look must have shown on his face, because Missy reached over and touched his shoulder. "Don't look so disappointed. There's still you and me. Oh, the fun we could have before the universe ends."

The Doctor very nearly asked her what she had in mind. How far had he fallen that he even considered giving up on the universe? Was this what she had made him into? Someone who simply let the universe fall apart around him because as long as he had her, he was happy?

But this time, there really was no solution. He checked over the temporal maps pouring over the screen. The Tiberian Galaxy hadn't even existed anymore at this point. Earth was slowly being eaten away at. Soon, the human race would never have existed. How long before that extended to the Time Lords? Before he and Missy began to fade?

No time the waste, then. "What did you have in mind?"

Missy grinned wickedly, opened her mouth to reply, and collapsed.

The Doctor ran to her side, and she clutched at his jacket. "My other selves," she whispered. "They're—"

Her voice trailed off. _They're fading away_. Their timelines were corrupted. Even as Time Lords, they couldn't survive this.

Even as…

"Time Lords," he said. "The Time Lords."

"Boring old politicians in funny hats," Missy wheezed. "Not how I'd spend the end of the universe."

"They could fix this. The Eye of Harmony, the proper one on Gallifrey, it could restore the balance—stop this from happening."

Missy looked away.

The Doctor leaned closer to her. "Time Lords. Tell me how to reach the Time Lords."

Missy struggled to sit up. "You'll leave me."

The Doctor stared at her. "This isn't the time to—"

"You only ever wanted Gallifrey, love. Once you have that, you don't need me anymore. Why would I ever give you that?"

"Because you'll die otherwise."

"Didn't stop me last time."

That, the Doctor reflected, was true. "We have to save the universe."

"You always have to save the universe. I'm thinking about us."

The Doctor turned away, and yelled in frustration. "I won't leave you. I'd never leave you. I've given up everything I ever was, all because you asked for it. I took your army. I gave you your throne. I _made this paradox_ for _you_. What more proof do you want that I love you?"

Silence followed his words. Missy's eyes widened.

The Doctor could feel his face burning. He'd been on the verge of saying it for so long, but now that he had said it, he wished he could suck the information back in.

Missy looked at the ground. "Send them a message. Coordinates 10-0-11-00:02. Turn the dimensional compensators to 5.3 and it'll land in the right place."

"Message." The Doctor ran to a bookcase and began rummaging through it, tossing books onto the floor here and there. He finally pulled out six squares wedged between _War and Peace_ and _The Definitive Works of Blinovitch_. Raced back down the steps to Missy, threw them onto the floor, and dived down next to them.

A hand touched his as he reached for the first piece. Missy took the piece from him. "We'll make it together."

"You'll help."

She touched his hand gently. "You stick with me, I'll stick with you."

They assembled the white cube within seconds. Missy placed her hand on one side, and the Doctor put his hand on the other.

"We'll be arrested for what we've done," the Doctor murmured. "Maybe forced to regenerate."

"Well, that won't be a first for either of us."

He grinned at her, and she giggled. The Doctor closed his eyes and concentrated. The white cube would send a psychic message through the Time Vortex to the Time Lords, if Missy had her location correctly. They'd never failed to answer a call for help on this scale. They'd also never failed to punish those who meddled with time so destructively.

His mind connected with the cube and within seconds, he could feel Missy's mind beside his. It was so familiar, and yet, without the persistent echo of the drums that had always coursed through it, it felt incomplete.

Missy seemed to have read his thoughts—she probably had. "It's a wonder to have some peace."

The message was short, just a call for help from the Time Lords, but it seemed to take forever to create. Missy's mind so close to his, just a reach away. The mind of a Time Lord was something that would never have a replacement in all the universe. It had driven him mad when he was the last, to feel no other minds beside his.

When the message had finished recording, it floated away from their fingertips and swept out of the TARDIS doors into the vortex.

The Doctor barely noticed. Missy's hands were still on his. He reached a hand up to her temple, and she did the same.

And her mind was open to him. She was turmoil swirling around in a sea of madness. The visions of the Untempered Schism, the drumbeat, absent but not forgotten, a million thoughts of him. Her thoughts flowed through his mind, and his mind through hers.

He could see a man in a suit with a slightly demonic face, and another burned to a crisp, and another, goatee and laughing, and on and on. Trying to kill him, saving him. Always trying to catch his attention. The Keller Machine, the Matrix, the Death Zone. Skaro, San Francisco, London, The Valliant.

Of course, the Valliant. The Year that Never Was. How could either of them forget? He wondered how he could ever have forgiven her, and yet he couldn't bring himself to consider doing anything else. For what she had done to Jack, to Martha and her family, to him—it was evil.

He could forgive her because he believed in redemption. He always had.

His mind was as open to her as hers was to him, and she could see the restlessness and horror that had sent him running from Gallifrey. She could see his unwillingness to let go of his old friend the Master, the endless quest to stop him from harming the universe, to make him into something better than what he had become. And she could see the Time War, the memories that he hid even from himself. How close he had come to destroying all of them, the guilt he had lived with. His thousand year penance on Trenzalore, standing beside the crack just to be with his people. And yet, he had thrown all of it away for her. He had given up the universe itself, every timeline that ever existed, for her.

To save her soul. But who would save his?

"We're not so different," Missy murmured.

The Doctor opened his eyes. Their foreheads were pressed together. He didn't break the connection just yet, leaving his hands on the sides of her face.

"Not anymore," he said. "I was going to make you better. That's what I am. The man who makes people better. Look where I am now."

The wheezing sound of the TARDIS dematerializing echoed in his ears. He still didn't look up. He didn't need to, to feel what was happening. The Time Lords had found them. They were going home.

They might be going to their deaths. They might never be the same again. It didn't matter, the Doctor decided. Because whatever happened—

"You're with me," Missy finished.

She finally broke the connection, and he instantly felt the loss. The TARDIS console room had never seemed so empty. Nothing in the universe had ever felt so empty as when he didn't have her.

He looked into her eyes. "Whatever happens, I'll never run off without you again."

She reached for his hand. The TARDIS fell silent. He looked over at the double doors. Outside those doors was home. The home he had been dreaming of for a thousand years. All he had to do was walk outside.

He looked at Missy. He had left Gallifrey because there was no good to be done there. They were a stagnant people. Because there was so much more to the universe than what they had to offer. The Master had been left behind in his quest to make the universe better.

Now, he was the man who had damaged the universe in a way he couldn't fix. He had left the universe worse off than he when he had started it.

What good was a Doctor if he couldn't heal?

He stood, as if in a trance, and reached for the TARDIS door. The familiar spires of the Citadel of the Time Lords stretched to the sky in front of him. He looked out at the red sky, and understood. There was no one to save his soul.

There was only Missy, and the path he had chosen to take for her sake. She had made him like her. And that was how it would be.

Missy stood beside him. She was everything he had left. She was home.

And back on Gallifrey, there was time for a new beginning.

_"With nothing left, he would have to cling to that which had robbed him, as people will." –William Faulkner_


End file.
